


Five Things That Never Happened to Rose Tyler

by kittu9



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, F/M, Gen, What-If, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-17
Updated: 2011-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:26:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/kittu9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe is infinite and everything you can imagine is real, except when it's not. Five things that never happened to Rose Tyler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things That Never Happened to Rose Tyler

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zauberer_sirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/gifts).



> Written for zau. Originally posted circa September 2006. Spoilers for the end of season one, if we’re still warning for that.

i.

Hugging herself, as if to chase away the feeling of loneliness that crept up upon her like old books and dusty corners (she tries to smother these feelings often, especially when it has become late at night; the streets below their flat are lit up like the myriad eyes of a different species, the industrial night noises are not at all like the comforting vowel-less _whrrs_ and _grmmmbls_ of shifting gears, the universe outside of her old bedroom window. She burrows close to Mickey, like a parasite, and his whistling sad snore makes her heart break for different reasons—but she’s not thinking of stars, or ships, so it’s better, safer, and not so blatantly wrong.), she thinks—      

                       _or tries not to think—_

Rose takes up running after a few weeks, not to keep in shape: the wind makes her eyes water a little and the tarry smell of the streets cannot, cannot make itself known to her brain. The city is one vast blur and the pigeons in the squares warble consolingly when she breaks through their mob-like flocks; they are lucky at least, and can always find home, even walking on this ground.

 

ii.

They escape from the bunker, the Dalek, soon enough: but by the end of the ordeal she is sick with fury and fright and she yells at the Doctor to get in his fucking ship _she-doesn’t-care-what-it-looks-like_ and leave her alone, not to come back: she should never have come along with him in the first place.

 

iii.

She takes him to the Aquarium one afternoon, because she’s always wanted to go: they spend the day staring into the great kind eyes of fish and the Doctor’s jacket gets horribly soaked at the dolphin show because one of those irrepressible mammals flips right into front of them and hits the water with a hard smack (it’s practically _grinning_ —Rose half-expects it to shout, tidal wave!). They hold hands and buy over-priced ice creams and he is never bored with it; he enjoys their domesticity.

 

iv.

She reads his big books by lamplight late into the night, tracing out the syllables laboriously with one badly-manicured finger (her nails got chipped on the last planet they saved). She practices saying the names in front of the bathroom mirror instead of making pictures in the condensation (well, mostly; she still scrolls her initials with gusto, but just so that she can see enough to clean her teeth). Slowly, she has made it all the way through the first volume of his collected Dickens (there are five more to go and she glares at them ferociously); it’s taking time (she giggles at all the bad jokes she could make), but she keeps at it, Dickens on one knee, a dictionary bent in half clutched in her free hand. She dog-ears the pages—Rose doesn’t know the difference between trade paperbacks from the library-exchange and signed hardbound first editions—and furrows her brow when her favorite characters don’t show up for chapters on end.

 

v.

 _My head_ —she stammers, godlight streaming from her pores and timelines folding and unfolding beneath her eyelids (these are signs which mark her body’s imminent demise), and the Doctor looks at her and watches, sadly, as she goes tumbling down. He sends a parcel of her things to her mother—silly, Rose-ish knickknacks that she’s picked up here and there, over the past few adventures—and he gets back into his funny blue box and no one ever sees him or his TARDIS again.

Jackie grieves the only way she knows how, which involves spending the night with lots of strange men and wandering about her flat in her dressing gown. Eventually, she throws the box away and repaints the now-spare bedroom a different color (yellow, which is a bad choice. It makes the walls seem too close). She doesn’t keep photographs of her daughter or her husband in the house; and pretty soon no one, not even Mickey, ever says a thing about what happened to Rose.


End file.
